"Laugh like your country depends on it."

Matt Damon did his blog about his mistrust of Sarah Palin. Pamela Anderson endorsed Obama on David Letterman. Wanda Sykes did a monologue of jokes bashing Sarah Palin on Jay Leno. Richard Gere ended his interview on Regis and Kelly by saying, “Obama-Obama.” Whoopie Goldberg and Barbra Walters fawned over Michele Obama on The View. Oprah openly endorses Obama. It is painfully obvious that Hollywood, for the most part, is wasting no opportunity to show their liberalism and publicly promote Obama for President.

An American Carol is that rare Hollywood film with a conservative perspective. It does not endorse McCain or poke fun at Obama. In fact, neither candidate are ever mentioned. Still, this film is intended for the Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage crowd. If you have liberal tendencies you may likely not enjoy the jokes or appreciate what it has to say.

The movie opens with a grandfather telling a story to his grandchildren on the 4th of July. It is a take on Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. He tells them about an America bashing documentary film maker, named Michael Malone. He makes films with such titles as Die You American Pig. His latest crusade is to ban The 4Th of July as a holiday and protest the war on terror.

Malone gets visited by four spirits. The first is John F. Kennedy, who reminds him that he advocated war when liberty in the world was threatened. Then he is visited by General Patton who takes time showing him, among other things, just how misinformed so many people are. My favorite joke in the movie is when Patton explains college protestors to Malone. George Washington and Bill O’Reilly stop by to help educate him as well. Trace Adkins shows up as the angel of death.

A side story involves Malone taking some money from some middle easterners to make a movie. He does not realize that they are terrorists. The greatest asset of the film though, is that it uses actual lines from real people to make a point. It quotes one of Kennedy’s inspiring speeches as well as one of Rosie O’Donnel’s crazy rants.

Some of my favorite moments are the ones that point out Hollywood’s comfort to the enemy. At one point Malone asks his nephew Josh, if he wants him to send him DVDs of his movie’s while he is serving over seas in the Navy. Josh replies that he already has plenty, as they found copies of them when they captured Saddam’s palace. Another scene has a movie star giving an acceptance speech, in which he admits that he will make films that show the evil of slavery and Nazis but not Islamic terrorists, as he is too scared to.

Like all of the liberal, anti-Bush and anti-war movies of the past couple of years, this movie is merely preaching to it’s choir. Conservative movie goers, who are sick to their stomachs of elite Hollywood actors slamming this country, will relish this comedy and laugh through most of it. The liberals will either bash it or ignore it. I for one, loved it. Early in the movie they make a comparison between Malone (Michael Moore) and Leni Riefenstahl. Who would have ever thought of doing that? Oh yeah, me back in 2003.

Did you enjoy Eric's review? +0 -2

 

In terms of political tendencies, I've always fallen somewhere in between Eric and Patrick. Not as conservative as Eric and not as liberal as Patrick. So while I didn't completely agree with everything this movie was saying, I did find quite a bit to at least chuckle at and a few things that made me laugh out loud. It helped my enjoyment that I really dislike Michael Moore and his documentaries.

My favorite joke in the movie was the running joke about Malone being just a Documentary director instead of a feature director. His award is smaller than the feature director's award and has a keychain attached to it. When he tells his agent that he's won awards, his agent responds, "Yeah, for DOCUMENTARIES" while making a jerking-off motion with his hand.

What I really liked about the movie though is that it isn't afraid of being politically incorrect. It makes fun of nationalities, handicaps and sexual orientation without worrying about whether it will offend anyone. I am so sick and tired of hearing people whine and complain that they were offended by some movie, stand-up comic, shock-jock or television show. I mean when did we all turn into glass and could so easily be broken? I don't remember being guaranteed at birth that I would never be offended during my life. So I salute this movie for that.

The only point in the movie that I really disliked is at the end at the country and western concert, the singer says, "Welcome to the real America" and Malone makes a comment about country music and NASCAR. To me that sounds very exclusionary. As if you either like country music and NASCAR or you're not part of the real America. I'm not a big country fan and watching a car go around in a circle sounds pretty boring to me, but I'm no less proud to be American.

It certainly made for a change to see a movie from this perspective. It was refreshing if nothing else. It's too bad that not all of the jokes work and too many of them devolve into slapstick, particularly the terrorists. It is funny and some of the points it makes are very true. Director David Zucker, who has made a career out of zany comedies, knows how to throw a lot of jokes at you, but as his career as gone on, his joke to flop ratio has gotten worse.

Did you enjoy Scott's review? +1 -1